And the Chromebook Pixel price is.....

[ChronoReverse]

Great, how about a price I can pick up as a non-educational user (and not refurbished either)? Apples and Oranges.

 

[TheStu]

I wouldn't say that, if you added $100-150 to the price to account for a license of Windows and a 128gb SSD you would have people lining up to buy one.

So... a 13" retina MacBook Pro then?

My point was that when just Apple had a display at this high of a DPI, there were those that assumed that the high cost of the machine was due to Apple being Apple. Now we see, no it is just that these screens cost a ton of money.

 

[Eug]

Great, how about a price I can pick up as a non-educational user (and not refurbished either)? Apples and Oranges.

You can walk into a store and get the Retina 13" MacBook Pro for $1499, so just over the $1300+150 threshold.

For that you lose the touch screen, but you get a slightly bigger screen, a real OS, longer battery life, 128 GB storage, 8 GB RAM, HDMI, Thunderbolt, and USB 3 as well.

I'd recommend getting the refurb though, for $1269.

 

[ponyo]

So Google built this laptop for professional photographers? How large is that market?

 

[McWatt]

Great touchpad

No, it looks like this is a clickpad. Even in its very best incarnation (on a Macbook), clickpads are inferior to average touchpads with discrete buttons.

 

[Dari]

Google is becoming arrogant. Why go with a powerful processor when everything is done in the browser?

 

[Aganazer]

Google is becoming arrogant. Why go with a powerful processor when everything is done in the browser?

Benchmarks =P

 

[Bateluer]

Its a shot across the Win8 devices, but ChromeOS will need a MASSIVE upgrade in improvement to make this viable. Windows 8 blows horribly, and Chrome OS could provide an alternative, but not in its current form. Perhaps if we can slap a Linux distro on it with ease?

I was just debating what more I could do with ARM Samsung Chromebook . . .ChromeOS is an appliance OS. Not much more.

 

[destrekor]

So Google built this laptop for professional photographers? How large is that market?

It's a decent size market - but at the same rate, they can't really expect that many photographers to jump to this platform simply because of the screen, if upgrading the storage and OS aren't easily accomplished. Why? They will want the tools to actually do anything with their digital photographs. Having a great screen but no appropriate professional software accomplishes nothing.

I mean, can you even run GIMP on a Chromebook? Obviously Photoshop and/or Lightroom are out of the question.

 

[ponyo]

It's a decent size market - but at the same rate, they can't really expect that many photographers to jump to this platform simply because of the screen, if upgrading the storage and OS aren't easily accomplished. Why? They will want the tools to actually do anything with their digital photographs. Having a great screen but no appropriate professional software accomplishes nothing.

I mean, can you even run GIMP on a Chromebook? Obviously Photoshop and/or Lightroom are out of the question.

Which is why we're all scratching our heads wondering where this product fits in. This looks like Q part 2. Product no one really wanted except for select few at Google. So who's brave enough to order one and hope Google gives it to them for free like the canceled Q?

 

[OBLAMA2009]

retarded, absolutely retarded. lets face it, everyone (ms, google, samsung) wants apples business model but first you gotta have apple level products, and someone would be a moron to buy this over a mbp. i dont even like laptops made out of chunks of aluminum, and i especially dont like that price. now they are apparently replacing docs with quickoffice, which basically means they dont fully believe in their own cloud model? and when you factor in the unexpected bugs like they had with previous chrome machines, what a ripoff...

 

[gus6464]

It's funny how the out of the 3 uber res laptops in the market, NONE are running Windows.

 

[lopri]

Seriously?

 

[Bateluer]

It's funny how the out of the 3 uber res laptops in the market, NONE are running Windows.

There are several 1080p ultrabooks in the 11.6-13.3in screen range running Windows 8. Granted, they've sold poorly because of Windows 8, so its understandable that most haven't heard of them.

 

[gus6464]

There are several 1080p ultrabooks in the 11.6-13.3in screen range running Windows 8. Granted, they've sold poorly because of Windows 8, so its understandable that most haven't heard of them.

1080p isn't uber res.

 

[bxcloud]

Google has been releasing great hardware like the Nexus devices and their services are top notch. This is the only product I've been disappointed with, I mean I might as well spend the extra $200 to buy a 13" Macbook Pro which is a proven device.

 

[s44]

1080p isn't uber res.

It is, though, the highest useful res (well, 19*12 if you like) on these mini-laptop-size screens. Like 1080p at the cell phone level, 25*whatever at ~12" is mostly an excuse to run up the numbers.

 

[PC Perv]

who is the manufacturer?


Posted from Anandtech.com App for Android

 

[cliftonite]

Was hoping this would be closer to $500 lol.

 

[crab0]

It is, though, the highest useful res (well, 19*12 if you like) on these mini-laptop-size screens. Like 1080p at the cell phone level, 25*whatever at ~12" is mostly an excuse to run up the numbers.

I would much rather "run up the numbers" and pixel double (getting image quality and good UI scaling) then the DPI style those 1080p windows machines use.

 

[destrekor]

It is, though, the highest useful res (well, 19*12 if you like) on these mini-laptop-size screens. Like 1080p at the cell phone level, 25*whatever at ~12" is mostly an excuse to run up the numbers.

I wouldn't argue it's an excuse to run up numbers, nor is it useless or no longer useful improvements.

There are certain factors that simply must be considered.

For 4-5" phones, 1080p is hardly a major limit, but at the same rate, it's probably a great example of a practical limit.
I haven't held a 1080p phone, but I imagine even 6" from your eyeballs, it's probably difficult to distinguish individual pixels. As long as their is a GPU involved that can push that for the various games and applications currently and to be available, it's an ideal and perfect resolution at that panel size/pixel density.

For 10-13" portable screens, going to iPad (new) type resolutions is quite useful. 2560x1600 or higher (that one is 16:10) just helps give visuals a very fine clarity, but it comes at a cost of processing power. And, of course, there's only so much you can do when scaling low-resolution images... so there is a need for content providers to answer that call.

More importantly: if we are talking desktop OS's here - there's a strong need for DPI scaling. Windows, OS X, Linux - DPI scaling is limited (I hear OS X has something called HiDPI after searching a bit - quality of results are unknown to me, is it similar to Windows DPI scaling, both the pros and cons?).

If we focus on any Mobile OS, there is zero concern (or, in the case of Windows 8, the Windows RT/Metro app interface). They all natively scale (or are are least coded for specific devices in the factory) to provide a consistent UI scale factor that matches up to display size, and resolution isn't considered. So the UI elements visually appear to be the same size on any resolution for a 10" tablet for such mobile interfaces.

Windows, at default DPI scaling, is a little difficult to work with at 1080p on a 10.5" display. Well, if using a mouse and keyboard it might not be too bad if you have good eyesight, but it's certainly not touch friendly. And Windows just doesn't guarantee an "everything plays well" scenario once you introduce DPI scaling of UI elements.

Hopefully Microsoft, after hearing out the complaints of this issue on the Surface Pro (in the "classic" interface - the RT/Metro interface is beautiful at that resolution), feels like a fire has been lit under their bum and figures out a true solution to the mess that the scaling can introduce.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

Was hoping this would be closer to $500 lol.

if you got rid of the metal rock it would be a $500 laptop. nobuddie but apple users want metal laptops anyway

 

[crab0]

More importantly: if we are talking desktop OS's here - there's a strong need for DPI scaling. Windows, OS X, Linux - DPI scaling is limited (I hear OS X has something called HiDPI after searching a bit - quality of results are unknown to me, is it similar to Windows DPI scaling, both the pros and cons?).

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5996/how-the-retina-display-macbook-pro-handles-scaling

TL;DR By default its like iPad where the res is 2560 x 1600 but desktop space/ui/retina optimized apps are as though its 1280 x 800 (but can increase desktop space at cost of some processing speed and image quality)

 

[crab0]

if you got rid of the metal rock it would be a $500 laptop. nobuddie but apple users want metal laptops anyway

Even big plasticky i5 laptops with 1080p TN panels aren't $500.

 

[Eug]

2560 x 1600/1700 is perfect for a 13" laptop. It's not just an excuse to run up numbers. 4xxx would be an excuse to run up numbers. The pixel density is great because it offers "retina" quality at usual working distances, yet also handles font sizing for current desktop/laptop OSes well. 1920x1080p in a 13" laptop does neither properly.